Amid efforts to enforce the Supreme Court judgement delivered on 11 July 2024 granting financial autonomy to Local Governments in Nigeria, legal icon Professor Oludayo Amokaye SAN has stressed the need to urgently resolve pending existential threats to local government administration in the country.
The Senior Advocate of Nigeria, who stated this at the 20th Annual Adekunle Kukoyi Memorial Lecture organised by the Nigerian Institution of Surveyors (NIS), Lagos State branch, pointed out that despite the lofty objectives of the Nigerian constitution’s framers, local governments in Nigeria have been facing an existential threat and gross erosion of their autonomy.
Amokaye, whose lecture dwelt on “Usurpation Of Powers and Functions: A Case Study Of Local Government Administration And Autonomy,’’ added, “This threat arises from the usurpation of their functions by some state governments, which deny them the opportunity to assume their socio-economic and political tasks of transforming their local communities. These state governments view the local government as their appendages, and by usurping and depriving it, they indirectly deprive the citizens of the benefits of local government democracy and governance.
“The blame for the state government’s usurpation of Local Government’s powers and functions can be laid solely at the door of the Constitution. The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999, like legislations before it, failed to address the dependent state of the Nigerian Local Government, and this can be gleaned from the combined reading of sections 7, 8, 124(3,4), 162(5) and 4th schedule of the CFRN 1999.’’
According to him, one of the most significant challenges to local government governance is the non-democratisation of the electoral process.
He added that elections to the local government are vested in the state government, which, in most cases, is not conducted.
“Where such elections occur, the party in government in the affected State often uses the state apparatus to rig the election in favour of their party’s candidates, eroding their autonomy and independence and undermining the democratic process,’’ he said.
As a way of solving the problems, he called for the immediate amendment of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to remove all the ambiguities as to the status, creation, funding and duties of the local government to bring into line the recent decisions of the Supreme Court on local government autonomy and strengthen the local government as a competent, efficient and effective third tier of government to the benefit of all Nigerians.
“State governments must ensure democratic governance at the local government level. This can be achieved through free and fair elections and the institutionalisation of local government autonomy.’’
He said the independence of the state electoral commission must be strengthened and guaranteed from political manipulation by State governments.
Earlier, the chairman of the Nigerian Institution of Surveyors (NIS) Lagos State branch, Surv. Olukolade Kasim said Surv. Adekunle Kukoyi, who was the president of the Nigerian Institution of Surveyors from 1973-1978 and the first President of the Association of Professional Bodies of Nigeria (APBN), remains an icon for many in the surveying community.
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